Antony Gormley's LAND Celebrates 50 Years of the Landmark Trust

Press Release: Thursday 6th November 2014

Antony Gormley‘s LAND celebrates 50 years of the Landmark Trust

The Landmark Trust is pleased to announce an exciting collaboration with sculptor Antony Gormley as the centrepiece of their 50th anniversary celebrations next year.

LAND comprises five distinct life-size standing sculptures by Antony Gormley cast in iron and installed at five Landmark Trust sites personally selected by the artist:

Martello Tower, Aldeburgh, Suffolk

Clavell Tower, Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset

Saddell Bay, Mull of Kintyre, Scotland

Lengthsman’s Cottage, Lowsonford, Warwickshire

Lundy Island, Bristol Channel

Founded in 1965, the Landmark Trust has rescued and restored almost 200 extraordinary buildings that would otherwise have been lost and given them a safe, secure future by letting them out for holidays to pay for their maintenance. For its 50thanniversary, Landmark sought to do something for everyone, not just for the 50,000 people who stay in their buildings each year. LAND is the result.

Antony Gormley's work shares many of the themes found in Landmark's work: an engagement with landscape and the habitats we create, and how at a human level we resonate with them.

The five life-size vertical body-forms will add a point of focus to each location, being thoughtful to their setting, encouraging visitors to contemplate the specific elemental conditions of each site, and in the case of the four coastal locations, the different qualities of the North Sea, the English Channel, the Kilbrannan Sound, and the Bristol Channel.

"The challenge is to make the verticality of each sculpture the focus, as a kind of rod or conductor for thoughts and feelings that might arise at a site. The sculptures identify the place where a particular human body once stood and anyone could stand, and in that respect they are open spaces empty of content and waiting for your attention," said Gormley.

Landmark’s buildings are often in remote locations, some of the buildings – notably towers and follies - were intentionally built to stand apart, some are positioned close to the coastline, making them a landmark or point from which to look out at the world. It is this distance in time and isolation and people's place within it that is celebrated in LAND, and which embodies Landmark's work over the past five decades. “The work is a register for our experience of our own relative positions in space and time, which has led me to choose positions on the edge; the liminal state of the shoreline.”

The sculptures will be installed by May 2015 and will be in place until May 2016. LAND is Antony Gormley's only solo outdoor installation in the UK in 2015. The sculptures will have full public access and be free for everyone to enjoy.

The launch of LAND will coincide with Landmark’s special Golden Weekend. On 16-17 May 2015,25 Landmarks will open to everyone, the buildings carefully selected to put 95% of the British population within 50 miles of these free Open Days, where they can learn more about the history of the buildings and the restorations. The sites include the five LAND locations:

“We are hugely excited to be working with Antony. He had the idea some years ago to join the British Isles together in one installation and we are thrilled that Landmark can make this idea a reality through our amazing sites.

We hope that the whole nation will want to experience, enjoy, and of course, share their thoughts and responses on LAND with us," said Anna Keay, Director of The Landmark Trust.

The Landmark Trust is encouraging public responses to each of the installations. Comments and responses will be collated in a published anthology of LAND. Further details will be made available at the official LAND launch event on Tuesday 12thMay2015.

The Landmark Trust would like to acknowledge and thank Antony Gormley Studio, White Cube, the Canal & River Trust and the Smedmore Estate for their incredible support. Thanks too to the generosity of private donors, Landmark is able to mount LAND without any diversion of funds from its core mission of rescuing buildings

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Notes to editors:

About each Landmark:

Martello Tower, Aldeburgh, Suffolk stands on the beach and was built between 1808 and 1812. It is the most northerly of a chain of defensive towers built along the South and East coasts of England in response to the very real threat of invasion by the French, led by the Emperor Napoleon. It is known by the name Martello, from the tower that provided the idea for their design. This stood on Mortella Point in Corsica. The tower was badly in decay when it was acquired by Landmark in the 1970s. Extensive repairs were carried out and the tower converted to provide holiday accommodation.

Clavell Tower, Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset was built in 1830 by the Reverend John Richards Clavell as an observatory and folly, and has served ever since as a feature in the landscape on this wide open sweep of coastline, familiar to all those who pass by it on the South West Coastal Path and to the sailors and smugglers who used it as a navigation mark. Its location has captivated many including writers like Thomas Hardy and PD James.

Saddell Bay, on the east coast of the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland looks out across the Kilbrannan Sound to the Isle of Arran. Landmark first acquired Saddell Castle, Shore Cottage and Cul na Shee in 1975 and acquired the remainder of the Saddell Estate in 1984, and in 1990 bought Ferryman's Cottage.

Lengthsman’s Cottage, Lowsonford, Warwickshire dating from c1812, was built for the 'lengthsman' who maintained not just the lock but also the stretch of canal to the next lock. With its barrel-roof, it is a rare survivor of its type on the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal.

Lundy Island is a place of wide spaces and big skies. A 400 foot granite outcrop in the Bristol Channel, Lundy has tremendous views of the sea and mainland. Its milder climate than the mainland has encouraged a rich and diverse range of animal and plant life, helped by an absence of roads, cars and pollution. Landmark administers and maintains Lundy and has 23 holiday properties on the island. The LAND installation will be at the SW Point near to the Devil's Limekiln.

About the Landmark Trust

1. The Landmark Trust was founded in 1965 to preserve architecturally interesting and historic buildings at risk, giving them a future by letting them for self-catering stays. The rental income pays for the buildings’ upkeep but the Trust relies on grants and voluntary sources of income to rescue further buildings at risk.

2. Full details of all Landmark’s 194 buildings are available on the website at http://www.landmarktrust.org.ukand in the 24th edition Landmark Trust Handbook, available via the website or phone 01628 825925.

About the Artist

Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and internationally with recent solo exhibitions at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (2014); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia (2012);Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2012) and The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2011). Permanent public works include the Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, England), Inside Australia (Lake Ballard, Western Australia) and Exposure (Lelystad, The Netherlands). Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honours list in 2014. He has been a Royal Academician since 2003 and a British Museum Trustee since 2007. Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. www.antonygormley.com

For further information and press enquiries please contact:

Marcus Stanton, Tel 020 8617 0210, Mob 07900 891287, Email [email protected]

Vanessa Shaw, Tel 01628 512137, Email [email protected]